Larry Page and Sergey Brin get iced to raise awareness for ALS

Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the latest to take the Ice Bucket Challenge — which as the name suggests involves filling a bucket full of ice and water, dumping it on yourself and challenging someone else to do the same. The idea behind the challenge is to raise awareness for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. ALS causes muscle spasticity, muscle loss, and makes it harder to speak, swallow and breathe.

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Larry Page and Sergey Brin get iced to raise awareness for ALS

It would be interesting to see if there is a correlating increase in Google searches for the disease. I know when I hear of a disease I'm not familiar with I usually do Google it. Also metrics on their website. From a geek perspective that would be one measure of increasing awareness. I would guess they are both up. Increase in donations over the same period last year is almost 10M with over 200K donors being new donors to the organization. I would say its working.

i'm sure Jane and her ilk are giddy with happiness and seeing green with all of the recent hype and "feel good" contributions rolling in for this "awareness" "charity". maybe she'll get a big raise this year. what a scam.

"The people who use our site, donors, would be appalled by a salary like this," Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, said of Spillett's compensation. "If you want to be a millionaire, go and work in the for-profit sector."

Doesn't matter, 99% of the ppl doing this are doing it so they can post on social media and say "look at me". Most of the NGOs that say they help "insert disease here" are pretty much money making entities. Ideally you never want the problem to go away.

Didn't realize the salary amount. Kind of disheartening. The phrasing comes off as: Ice bucket, or pay $100. Given the CEO's salary, maybe the ice bucket is the high road after all? I think I agree with your perspective. Unfortunately, my grandmother had ALS.

From the TED talk i posted below, why in this country do we think a bake sale with 5% overhead that only provides $71 dollars a year for charity is better than a corporate entity with 40% overhead that provides $71 million for charity? Why is overhead and salary amount the only figure we care about?

I was speaking primarily towards the self-centered "look at me" characteristic of things like this. Why not just donate and ask others to as well? This is just another way that we love to draw more attention towards ourselves.

Because I wouldn't want to watch any of these people giving a short speech or appeal on said disease. Beyond the attention to themselves it draws attention to the disease and that should be okay in the big picture. If you're great at running non-profits you're also probably great at running for-profit organizations. If you want the best people you'll have to stay somewhat competitive. Why not look up the profiles and previous salaries of these people to have a constructive argument.

Umm...wow. Ok let me try this again. I could care less WHO is doing the "challenge." Let's just say its the average joe. All I am saying is that without the ability to post videos and pictures up on social media of yourself doing something, this wouldn't be nearly as popular. I am not saying that it isn't a way of making money for good. But at the end of the day this challenge is another way to get eyes on ourselves. We are hyper-individualized self obsessed Americans; myself included.

"There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it." Mark Twain

Not an American but I wish other countries like mine would adopt some of these "gimmicks" to raise awareness for health/disease. In my country it's the average Joe doing things like this and it doesn't get any attention or buzz whatsoever. Social media is here to stay and is a tool to be used in anyway. I retain that this is one of the better uses.

And almost as if giving an intentional nod to my argument, you have individualized the sinful human condition to what lies in any one persons heart. How can we escape what we've always been? Certainly not by our own power.

You should check this out. Judging a charity based on overhead or salary of the CEO is complete trash and full of ignorance. This TED talk provides an interesting perspective. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, you can skip to ~3:10.

"Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend — not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let's change the way we think about changing the world."

I agree that most people don't care how much a charity spends but rather how. And this thinking is wrong. As for your second statement, it is not a larger percentage that goes towards executives. The larger percentage is still going towards the cause. The problem is that people feel that ANY percentage not going directly towards the cause is terrible. When in fact, if some money was spent paying for top quality talent that could multiply donations, much more money would go towards the cause.

The person managing an organization with $19.6M in revenue makes $300K. You propose that the person managing this much money be a volunteer? The comment from Berger is referencing Roxanne Spillett's (CEO of Boys and Girls Club) $1,000,000 compensation in 2008.

You are reaching here, big time. The site you link gives the ALS Association a rating of 90.73 out of 100 and 4 stars out of 4. Certainly not a good example of a wasteful organization.

who said she should volunteer, asshole? straw man argument. you sound like you work for a charity.

this "revenue" you speak of is DONATIONS born on the backs of volunteers and donors who sacrifice. that sacrifice should not be used to enrich the people at the top of the NON-PROFIT charity. i believe that a $300,000 annual salary is EXCESSIVE for any NON-PROFIT/CHARITY. and yes i know where Berger's quote is from i posted it but the same principle applies.

So it's OK for a person running a multi million dollar charitable organization to make money, just not "too much money." And you get to be the one who decides how much is too much.

If you want someone who is good at their job to run your organization, you have to pay them a competitive wage, whether it's a for-profit organization or not. I don't work for a non-profit, and I don't make anywhere near $300,000. But that salary is not excessive for that position.

it's my OPINION that it's excessive and i'm free to voice that opinion. no i don't decide - it's for each donor to decide what's excessive or not and to support or not support that organization. i doubt most people making donations realize how much the people that run non-profit/charities get paid.

No one should do it. This is "social media as activism". None of these idiots is actually raising awareness.
That said, props to the folks at AC for actually writing something about ALS in the article beyond the name of the disease. Most of the participants and the media covering it say NOTHING about ALS, except to say this is for ALS so that they can get some warm fuzzies.
ALS is an awful condition, I spent two years caring for someone with ALS during college, but this 'campaign' is stupid and denigrating. Any time you have people doing 'stupid human tricks' and patting themselves on the back for it instead of actually raising awareness or donating money you belittle the actual condition.

You are aware the challenge is either do this and post a video or donate money.

I understand that this may make people think that the ones doing it aren't donating but after reading the ALS website, I found this to be untrue. They have gained over $4 million in the last 2 weeks because of this awareness "stunt".